Hi, I'm Billfred Leverette.

I'm in Columbia, South Carolina seeking remote or local opportunities to tackle interesting problems as the person who makes things happen--some people call that a project manager, some people call that a technical or marketing role, some people call that a wildcard. I'm far more interested in the work than the title.

I've been working on a few things. This GitHub Pages site is one of them, since it's good practice for using GitHub in general. I'm learning the intricacies by starting this site off like it's 1998 all over again. (While I'm AI-optimistic and have experimented my way to interesting projects, this is all by hand the hard way.)

I've pulled off some other interesting tasks too. Ask me about the time I got an entire NFL stadium looking for one student to reunite them with their goat. You can reach me on LinkedIn. Or if you'd like something easily printed, here's my resume as a PDF.

Robots!

For over 20 years, I've been involved with the FIRST Robotics Competition, a program that seeks to engage students in science and technology careers by making it a varsity sport with 120-pound robots. It's a lot of long nights during the two-month build season, but it's also quite the project management exercise.

SCRIW is the oldest off-season FIRST Robotics Competition off-season tournament in the Carolinas. Depending on how you want to count things (and with a hall pass for 2020), it may be the older than the oldest in-season event too. I have served on the event planning committee since its inception in 2011, and I am the voice of the event.
Pandamaniacs is the FRC team that I have mentored since late 2017 (and previously, from 2004-2006). In fall 2024 when teachers stepped back, I became head coach and shepherded the team from its school district affiliation into a true community team that serves students from five programs in two counties.

When I rejoined the team, they had only reached playoffs three out of fourteen seasons and were taking hours to get set up at events. I've guided the team's transformation from competitive afterthought to regular contender in the state with two blue champion's banners, multiple judged awards, and a pit that's operational in about five minutes.
Ballin' On A Budget: Cheap Thrills, Ugly Hacks, and Stealing Wins is a workshop I've presented on multiple occasions at FIRST South Carolina events, and it was selected as a presentation for the 2026 Woodie Flowers Conference in Detroit. It contains a lot of my learned experiences on stretching budgets through creative sourcing and financial hacking. It also veers into the psychology of someone who's converted late-round draft picks into six tournament champion banners across three teams. This version was presented at the 2026 FSC Kickoff event in West Columbia, SC.
Your First Hour of Onshape Training, For It Is 10:35 AM On Kickoff Day And There Is No Time For A Second Hour is a presentation I made at the 2026 FSC Kickoff (yes, at 10:35 AM and the game reveal was at noon). I was asked to field a workshop on the excellent Onshape computer-aided design package. As one of the few marketing graduates to have EMCH 111 on my college transcript, I know that you can't cover it in full--but you can lay out just enough to make a kid dangerous and introduce them to the places for the real sauce.
Cult of the Minimum Competitive Concept - A presentation I made demonstrating options for building simple and effective competition robots. This was last updated for the start of the 2022 season.
Sample FIRST Robotics Competition Scouting Workbook - I developed this spreadsheet over several years to make it dirt simple to collect information on robots competing in matches every few minutes and translate it to actionable information. By abstracting data display from data entry, we make the former better and the latter faster. It also scrapes publicly-posted API information on request, allowing the team members collecting data to skip information that the referees are already entering. (Note: All API keys have been deactivated.)

Assistive Technology!

Adapted Toy Training Videos I recorded to demonstrate how to modify off-the-shelf toys so they can be controlled by an accessibility switch. Toys that are sold pre-adapted tend to carry a premium of at least $50, and some companies are better than others at build quality. By learning how to DIY it, you not only save the cash but know how to do the repairs. I also performed this training live at the 2022 Assistive Technology Industry Association Expo as an invited speaker. (Free registration required to get the videos.)
In 2021, I set to work on a CircuitPython project to make a Serpente board interface nicely with an iPad as an HID device. (The Serpente is out of production; if I was replicating this now, I'd use the similar QT Py board as it's cheaper but still retains USB-C.) I wired the board to accept headphone jacks, allowing users to connect accessibility switches and perform most operations available on an iPad.

Other Things!

Billfred's Guide to Small-Time Package Mailing - During the early COVID lockdowns in 2020, many of my friends started producing personal protective equipment for healthcare workers and others in their communities. And they were grossly overpaying on shipping because they didn't know the tricks you learn as a longtime seller of things on the internet. By compiling my wisdom into one widely-shared document, I saved people hundreds of dollars they could plow back into making more items to give away.